The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1986 (27. évfolyam, 104. szám)

Baló György: Experiencing History - an Interview with János Berecz

22 THE NEW HUNGARIAN QUARTERLY had got there and how we could extricate ourselves out of it. Consequently, here every Communist had to give a concrete answer to the concrete situation. In this he had to accept something. Then sometimes there is also luck in history. The lucky thing was that a revolutionary centre developed in Hun­gary which wanted more than a socialist consolidation. The possibility had also existed for a relatively sectarian consolidation. The main question was not what sort of consolidation it should be, once it was a socialist one naturally, but that a counter-attack had to be started here, a counter-revolu­tion had to be liquidated. The important thing is that, instead of those who to a certain extent stuck to the old methods, a revolutionary centre came into being which immediately entered into a twin struggle against the two extremes. In other words, we accept everything that was an achievement and socialist, but draw a categorical line between ourselves and the crimes, the mistakes, and call the group which had deviated from the path of Marxism- Leninism the Rikosi-clique. Let us remember that we had been brought up in the spirit of “under the leadership of Comrade Rákosi” and so on, and then the leadership of the party suddenly radically broke with this. Well, there were many who did not like this. It was characteristic of the first period of the HSWP that its majority was of people “with one ear.” One was sensitive to this, the other to the opposite. Luckily, the kernel was sensitive to both and it was joined by many people. Another reason was that this centre drew a clear line between the enemy leading an armed attack against the people’s power and the movement of the masses. This I consider extremely important, although little is being said of this. Because there was a popular movement in Hungary, this was already declared by the call of November 6th concerning the organization of the Party, and the resolu­tion of December 5th, 1956 said expressly that there had been a movement of the masses. They wanted clean socialism. If this duality is obliterated, then the masses have to be punished. Instead, let us punish the guilty, reprimand those who made grave errors in key situations or key positions, and let us tell the masses that your intention was clean and honest. The majority of people, when they set out in the street, with red-white­­and-green flags, singing the national anthem, did not want a counter-revolu­tion, but something cleaner and better! And this demand must be taken seriously. And from November Iith, 1956 to March 1957 the gov­ernment gradually met the demands, most demands. The government recog­nised that these were demands of the masses arising out of the objective situation and meeting them was necessary for the further development of the consolidation, for the building of socialism. In the West it is often claimed that the government expropriated the goals of the counter-revolution— T—i------------------------------------------------1------------------r

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